New York Press oops: Savage doesn’t think it’s plagiarism

Syndicated columnist Dan Savage of The Stranger says he feels bad for the New York Press columnist who lost her job after it was revealed she used his material in her inaugural column — a gaffe he doesn’t equate with plagiarism.

Savage got an e-mail Thursday morning from the Press’s former advice columnist apologizing for Claudia Lonow’s actions, he said. The paper’s editor-in-chief apologized publicly on the Press’s Web site.

“I don’t think she did this on purpose,” Savage wrote in an e-mail Thursday. “The borrowing was an accident, not malicious, and doesn’t rise to the level of plagiarism, in my opinion. She could’ve avoided this … if she’d said, ‘I don’t have any letters yet, so here are some I swiped from ‘Savage Love.” And I would’ve given her my permission to use ’em.”

The New York Press ran Savage’s sex column, “Savage Love,” before it moved to the Village Voice.

P.S. — The name on next week’s New York Press sex column won’t be that of a new paid writer, but of a lucky reader. The paper is offering its now vacant sex column space to New Yorkers who will compete for the honor of filling it every week for the next three months, the paper announced today:

Those weekly winners will become finalists in the competition, which will culminate in the awarding of a weekly sex column – to be launched in our 20th anniversary edition on April 23, 2008. The finalists will be chosen by the editors, and the winner selected by reader votes.